Scott was first elected to the House in 2010, winning an open seat after defeating the son of longtime Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), the former segregationist who held the state’s other Senate seat for nearly 50 years until 2003.

He will become just the seventh African-American to serve in the Senate and the first black senator from the South since the 1880s.

Only three black senators have been voted into office by their constituents: Sen. Edward Brooke (R-Mass.), Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) and now-President Barack Obama (D-Ill.). The others were elected by their state legislatures (before direct election of U.S. senators began) or appointed.

DeMint's term runs until 2016, but there will be a special election in 2014, so it remains to be seen whether this black Republican from the South can win a state-wide election.

ADDED: The linked WaPo article identifies Thurmond — "the former segregationist" — as a Republican, but when he was a big-time segregationist, he was a Democrat:

Thurmond represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Democrat and, after 1964, as a Republican....

In opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. In the 1960s, he opposed the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 to end segregation and enforce the voting rights of African-American citizens. He always insisted he had never been a racist, but was opposed to excessive federal authority.

ST and EMD: I have come to think of the commenters Shiloh, Ritmo, Inga and Jake Diamond as a sort of Greek Chorus without content. They chirp. They snark. But only rarely do they offer comments of any length or proceed with a willingness to debate in good faith. I suspect that ST's comment about a lack of confidence is on the mark. Like most lefties their ideas are received and not particularly well understood. Further they appear to have a decided lack of worldly experience of the sort that naturally quells outrageousness and leads to a more human and sympathetic view of others.

The racial component of this story, properly viewed, is NOT that the Republicans are somehow engaging in affirmative action in the selection of Scott (none is needed to justify selecting him). Rather, it’s the absence of any Democrat U.S. Senator.

That says something about the polarization and tokenism of the Democrat party, which is focused in maximizing the number of minorities in Congress, which it does by steering its minority stars into gerrymandered, leftist congressional districts in which they compile records that make them almost always unelectable on a state-wide basis.

Various people have addressed this in detail, of course. For example Jamelle Bouie in the American Prospect:http://prospect.org/article/other-glass-ceiling.

And James Joyner on the “clownish legislators” produced by this system, in which primary campaigns sometimes devolve into a debate about which candidate is blackest, not who’s best (with Harvard Law grad Artur Davis recently losing that competition):http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/racial-gerrymandering-and-idiots.

Well my friend Shiloh does have her right-wing equivalents here, in spades.

No, not really. There are right wing wingnuts here, that's for sure, but NONE of them are addicted to the drive-by snarky comment that we're all supposed to recognize as just a brilliant gem of thought without any further supporting argument.

Most of the wingnuts, on the contrary, will be only to happy to go on at length in their exposition.

I exempt Inga from that list. While we don't agree, I think she comes in for too much gratuitous abuse here.

Scott is my Congresscritter. Solid guy, good politician. Beating Strom Thrumond's son was no fluke, nor was it a piece of cake. But Scott was a better organizer and better campaigner.

Scott should have no trouble winning a state wide campaign in 2014. It would be a surprise if he even gets a primary challenge, and certainly it won't be from someone better financed, as was predicted above.

Of course the lefty demonization will start. People like Scott are an existential threat to their lock on the black vote.

What is an Althouse lemming? Maybe it is somebody who would follow Althouse's lead in politics. That is ridiculous to anybody who pays attention to this blog. Most people who comment here are either party line hack dems or conservatives and Althouse does not belong to either group. Althouse is mostly liberal but recognizes some of the horrible stuff the dems do. She certainly is not close to being a conservative. The idea that conservatives who comment here follow the political philosophy of Althouse is completely out of touch with reality.

Shiloh's point seems to be that all conservative commentors here must be stupid since some conservatives did not predict an Obama win. That, of course, is a completely irrational and preposterous deduction. Why would an inaccurate election prediction by one commentor imply that another commentor is stupid? For that matter, why would a single inaccurate election prediction imply that that predictor is stupid?

I just wanted to point out that that particular sentence written by Shiloh was quite stupid and out of touch with reality.

What percentage on Americans are even aware that the Democrats based their regional and national power on segregation and disenfranchisement of blacks for over 100 years? What percentage of younger WAPO reporters know that?

After reading many laughable, con 2012 presidential predictions at Althouse, interesting that an Althouse lemming would call anyone stupid!

All she has to do is read the little asshole's drivel and it's real easy.

If it weren't for Politico and Ned Silver, he'd be Diamond, the man made of dumbshit.

As mentioned previously, this blog is somewhat entertaining as regards to Althouse and her con flock's daily self-righteousness.

the only self-righteousness on display comes from the Lefties, especially the little asshole's need to feel superior to his intellectual, cultural, economic, and social betters.

As they stumble over themselves trying to appease Althouse and convince themselves all issues are black and white, no pun intended.

Most issues are.

Again, it's interesting how a small group of libs tend to dominate the discussion here. And Althouse #1 doting, trained seal mentions my name many times in threads I haven't made a single post.

No, the Lefties don't dominate. they get their asses kicked until they run and hide. That's the way it is with small, annoying children, but you have the little asshole's raison d'etre in his own words.

Rather sad, actually.

phx said...

Well my friend Shiloh does have her right-wing equivalents here, in spades.

You can tell a man by his friends.

And we didn't know the little asshole had his (uh, her) plumbing yanked.

My first thought as well upon hearing the news. I'm waiting for the 'authentic' black community to disown him like they did with Clarence Thomas, J.C. Watts, Condi Rice, pre-2004 Colin Powell, and Allen West.

What percentage of Democrats are even aware of just how fucking weird the New Deal Democratic coalition was?

I mean, talk about a bunch of folks who really didn't like each other!

I think what the liberals see as the evil Nixonian "Southern Strategy" can be explained as well by the internal contradictions (to use a Marxist term) of the New Deal coalition working its way through the system. It was a coalition that had reached its sell-by date.

TraditionalGuy: I view Inga more as a reflector of the Barbara Streisand school of political thought. That and a mixture of morning TV and The View and a rather confused outlook on blogs versus the chat rooms of old.

When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was being debated, Democrats had a 67-33 majority in the United States Senate. However a large group of the Democrats opposed the bill and joined in the filibuster. It wasn't just Thurmond. It was a considerable percentage of the Democratic party.

When the cloture vote came to override the filibuster and pass the bill, 27 of the 33 Republican senators voted for cloture.

Had it been left to the Democrats the Civil Rights acts never would have made it out of committee.

What happens when an irresistible force meets an unmovable object? If the irresistible force is a logical and informed argument and the unmovable object is a stupid person, then the answer is that the unmovable object does not get moved, i.e. the stupid person not only does not learn but revels in their stupidity and ignorance.

The moral of the story is that there is no point in trying to teach a person who is too stupid to learn because you can't fix stupid.

Steve Koch: But those of us who are lucky enough to be surrounded by smart people day in and day out are often surprised by stupid people. It does not occur to us, at first at least, that the person with whom we are having difficulty communicating is indeed dim. Dumb.

He won't get any Black votes; Democrats fear successful Black Republicans for the same reason plantation owners in the antebellum South hated free Blacks. They'll pull out all the stops to make sure his term is short.

As for Marshal, I happen to have a life, I was babysitting my three year old granddaughter and decided she deserved my undivided attention. I didn't leave the thread you speak of to avoid anything. I see now going back there that Jake Diamond provided two examples and there were more from the last two days. And hell no I'm not going to waste my precious time looking for them. The two comments Jake provided were plenty to prove my point.

Also Marshal, have you not noticed that even conservative commenters no longer engage you in debate or discussion? Hmmm, I wonder why?

"ballistic — extremely and usually suddenly excited, upset, or angry"Latin ballistaFirst Known Use: circa 1775Yes, a lot of these commenters are upset and angry about the color of Tim Scott's skin. Indeed. "

Semantics, a favorite refuge for my reactionary friends. Would the word "obsessed" make you happier?

Inga said... didn't leave the thread you speak of to avoid anything. I see now going back there that Jake Diamond provided two examples and there were more from the last two days.

On the threads I speak of you were asked why you repeated the lies that the Romneys' took a 77k tax credit for their horse and there are tax credits for offshoring jobs. But it's quite revealing you consider Jack your dear ally: vile is apparently quite welcome in your book. We already know from your lapses of calling religious folk Jeebus Freaks and claiming they intend to institute The Handmaid's Tale that you're quite vile yourself. Others might not care you're a nut trying to pass, but they know.

Hush puppies are essentially deep-fried cornbread balls. In Greenville Tennessee, some claim they were invented there. It is said that slaves carried them to hand out to dogs and keep them from barking when the slaves were sneaking around places they weren't supposed to be.

So, instead of calling Scott a cornball brother, they can call him a hush puppy. He is handed out by the Republicans to the barking media. After all he is someplace he is not supposed to be.